Chapter 21 Book II The World as a Preliminary Treatise on the Will §21

Whoever now, by virtue of all these investigations also in the abstract, has clearly and properly acquired the knowledge which everyone immediately possesses in the concrete; His own will, and his own appearance both due to his action, and due to the unchanging substrate of this action, his body, exhibited to him as representation, recognizes that will constitutes the most immediate [ thing], but as this most immediate thing, it does not enter fully into the form of representation—in which object and subject are confronted—but in a direct manner—in In this way one does not quite clearly distinguish between subject and object—that which reveals itself; and it is not entirely revealed, but only in its individual activities that the individual himself becomes aware of it;—I say, who If this belief has been acquired with me, it will automatically become his key to the innermost essence of all nature, because he can now transfer this belief to all these phenomena as well. [Of course,] those appearances, unlike his own, are not known outside of indirect knowledge but also in direct knowledge, but only in indirect knowledge, i.e., one-sidedly as representations. .Not only will he recognize that same will in man and animal as their innermost essence in phenomena similar to his own; The force from which crystals are formed, the force which makes the magnetic needle point to the north pole, the force which is transmitted to him from the vibrations produced by the contact of different metals, the force which appears in the affinity of substances to avoid separation and combination, and finally there is The gravitational force which acts so powerfully in all matter, the force which draws the stone to the earth, and the earth to the sun,—all these are regarded as different only in their appearance, but as one and the same in their inner essence. The thing, conceived as that which is immediately, so intimately, more fully known than all other [things], and which, where it manifests most vividly, is called will.Only by using reflective thinking in this way can we no longer stop at appearances and enable us to go beyond appearances to things in themselves.Phenomena are called appearances, nothing else.All representations, of whatever kind, all objects, are phenomena.Only will is a thing in itself.As will it is by no means representation, but is different in kind from representation.It is the origin of all representations, all objects and phenomena, visibility, objectivity.It is the individual [thing], and it is also the innermost thing, the kernel, of the whole [the encyclopedia].It is manifest in every force of nature that works blindly.It also manifests itself in the considered actions of human beings.But the huge difference between the two is only for the degree of appearance, not for the essence of the "manifester".